On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 11:19:30AM +0100, Bolstridge, Andrew wrote:
> Hi.
> I was thinking about how binaries are stored in the WC.
> Currently, checkout any WC and you get a copy of the files in the
> metadata directories, which is fine for things like source files and
> other text files, but when people come to store binaries in their
> repositories, this starts to be a nuisance.
>
> Storing binaries, I hope, isn't controversial. I do it for
> shipped releases, but also store word documents, images and similar.
>
> Thinking about why a copy of each file is stored locally, it
> makes perfect sense for text, as you can perform certain operations
> really quickly - diff for example. However, I'm not sure these
> operations can be reasonably applied to binary files?

There is also 'svn revert'.

Of course, the base-text is always just a cache for something already
in the repository. But when Subverion was designed, being able to revert
local changes without having to contact the repository was seen as an
advantage over CVS. The new working library might eventually make
text-bases optional, but it's not a primary concern right now because
development of the new working copy code is still in its early stages.